Science in The Urantia Book--who,
what when, where, why and how
The Fellowship's 2003 Summer Study Session
Dan Massey

In opening this talk I had
originally intended to simply say what I had to say, without further comment.
On reflection, I decided that you should be forewarned that I am about to
question a wide range of statements from and about The Urantia Book.
Some of you will find these ideas extremely disturbing. To you I say, think
of this talk as a secular critique of the book and the stories that surround
it. Think of me as an anthropologist who has disappeared for decades into
the jungles of Urantia, and now reports back on some of the strange rituals
and beliefs he has witnessed. Some of you will try to invent a point-by-point
refutation of my speculations. To you I say, stop wasting your life on foolishness,
you’ve missed the entire point of the talk.

When Lee Smith first asked
me to speak at this conference, I was somewhat nonplussed by the need to
choose a topic. In the past, I have tried to correlate factual statements
in the book with the discoveries of science or to expound theoretical statements
to see how they might relate to potential scientific discoveries. I decided
that I was, after many years, unhappy with this approach to the factual
material in the book and needed to reconsider and reevaluate my attitude.
In particular, it seemed to me that I was following the path of so many
Christian fundamentalists in their tortuous attempts to justify the factual
statements contained in the Bible as inspired truths. This was by no means
my viewpoint or my desire, and my changing perspective on the book and its
sources led me to a new, admittedly speculative viewpoint, which I will
present to you today.

To capture the essence of
this new attitude towards the book’s “facts” I must briefly recapitulate
the history of my own changing perceptions. I will be looking backwards
over my own 28 years experience in the movement and over the almost 100
years that have passed since the inception of the revelation.

I encountered The Urantia
Book during a personal quest in response to a deeply felt spiritual
need for life meaning beyond the secular sureties of science and technology.
In the text of the book, I found some possibly correct answers to questions;
however, more important, I found a way of talking and writing about emotional
and spiritual reality that made these things real to me in a way all formal
religions had failed to do. In short, I found the way the book explained
things to be far more valuable than the statements the book made.

I did not immediately examine
or challenge the “factual” material, including the “scientific” material
in the book. I automatically assumed it could not be accurate and would
only detract from the rest of the text. I wondered why such material would
be in a book like The Urantia Book. As I became more familiar with
the book, I found my attitudes towards spiritual and interpersonal realities
being transformed by the explanations I read. This transformation has not
ceased for the intervening 28 years, and I gladly acknowledge that reading
the book radically changed my life and my appreciation of it. Early on in
my reading I became convinced that some of the authors of the book were
supernatural beings, just as they claimed, and that they were completely
serious about what they were saying. I was not prepared, however, to accept
the perfect integrity of the text as allegedly revealed. I felt it most
likely suffered from deletions and additions by unknown parties. I found
it easiest simply to accept what made sense or worked in my experience and
to gloss over the rest, most of which was tediously “factual” and not capable
of proof, disproof, or experiential realization.

I was fortunate to be able
to travel widely, visiting Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and numerous
locations in New England during my first few months with the book. These
trips enabled me to meet students of the book from many walks of life, with
many theories to share about the significance and origin of the book. These
theories do not belong to the religion of the book. Rather, they are part
of the emerging religion about the book. I was initially interested
to determine that the Urantia movement was not dominated by cult-leader
figures, who gained power or profit from the respect others accorded the
text they controlled.

I learned many stories of
the origin of the text, including the various versions put forth by Dr.
Sadler and long time members of the First Society. While these stories were
somewhat consistent with each other, there were definite aspects that made
them seem more mythic than factual. First, the fact that all the information
about the origin had been provided by Dr. Sadler and a handful of other
people indicated that it could have been completely fabricated to
serve some less lofty purpose than promised. On the other hand, there didn’t
seem to be anyone in a position to profit from the operation of the movement.
At this early time, I did not see how the striving for political and legal
positions has tempted so many in positions of “leadership” to skew their
loyalties, turning partially from the Master portrayed in the book to serve
the mundane commercial and legalistic concerns of organizations.

For many years I avoided making
my concerns more public and simply acted as if I believed every word of
the book was true and not one word could possibly be incorrectly placed
(or abused in editing for publication). The growing body of knowledge concerning
human texts that have served as sources for the book, developed over the
last ten years by Matthew Block, made this an increasingly hard position
to maintain. For example:

I knew the book said its cosmology
was “not inspired.” Later, I learned that much of the “science fact” in
the book was taken uncritically from human sources. The fact that the redactors
did not have a very good understanding of the material they were editing
is apparent from some of the errors and inconsistencies in this material.

I learned that Dr. Sadler
knew of the extensive borrowings of the book from other sources, since he
used and properly acknowledged the same sources in his own popular and professional
writings. Yet no one had ever told me that Dr. Sadler knew or reported these
things. It seems to have been a closely held secret, perhaps held by the
doctor alone. I later learned, however, that Christy once wrote to Jacques
Weiss something to the effect of “we know where everything comes from.”

I learned that much of the
science material was irreconcilable with well-established findings of modern
science. Dates, sizes, locations, in fact all relevant data seems to have
been assembled rather casually from contemporary source publications and/or
the fanciful human imagination.

As I learned more about the
structure of the text and heard more stories about its origin (all first
told by Dr. Sadler) it became increasingly clear to me that Dr. Sadler and
his close associates could have fabricated any story of the origin of the
text that they wished and would have been immune to challenge from the Forum
members, who could only accept the story Dr. Sadler told. They could even
have arranged for material to appear in the book’s published text that would
seem to corroborate any myth they wished to project.

In testing the credibility
of a myth it is important to assess the likelihood of it being true, given
our knowledge of human nature and the personalities involved. In the case
of the book, I found it impossible to think of the various origin stories
for the book, as well as the governing documents of the organizations (The
Fellowship Constitution and the Foundation Declaration of Trust) as anything
other than humanly invented conveniences.

As for what the book says,
I found its spiritual assertions, to the extent they could be tested, to
be subjectively true and valuable. As for what Dr. Sadler and others have
said about the book, I found these stories unappealing due to their incompleteness,
inconsistencies, unverifiability, and, in some cases, I feel, distortion
to satisfy purely human prejudices. In short, I came to feel that the revelation
in the book was, while possibly incomplete in some areas, basically true
and good. On the other hand, I came to reject the origin myths so popular
among the readership as simple legends that might or might not have a core
of fact, but which could not be a useful guide to living with the revelation.

So how does this relate to
the “scientific” material in the book? These “factual” assertions are either
readily traceable to human sources or deal with matters so remote and abstract
one may be fairly confident that either no human source could exist or someone
is pulling our leg and actually invented the whole thing like a science
fiction tale. Take, for example, paper 42, “Energy—Mind and Matter”. This
paper begins with a very high level overview of the nature of material manifestation
in the universe and then descends into a garble of an early 20th
century college textbook. Then, toward the end, we are suddenly dealing
with the abstract and spiritual again. The opening and closing sections
could hardly have been written by humans, unless, as I suggested, they were
simply faking it. The midsection, however, is for the most part a garbled
set of disconnected excerpts from a physics textbook. This assemblage is
of such mediocre quality that it must have been prepared by people with
no real grasp of the subject matter.

On the other hand, scattered
through this miserable redaction one finds such gems as “there are 100 octaves
of wave energy,” a statement which flies in the face of practically everything
currently or previously thought true of wave phenomena. Is such an inclusion
to be taken as a virtually untestable revelation of a physical fact, or
as an incomprehensible meander from a line of rigorous logical thought?

Ultimately, the serious student
of the book who engages the scientific-factual material is forced to examine
a number of possibilities, all of which fail to match details of the origin
myths promulgated about the text and/or inserted into the text itself. These
problems include:

4)
Irrelevance of much factual material to the principal themes and topics
of the book.

In short, one begins to ask
why the book contains so much incorrect information, copied from so many
soon-to-be obsolete sources, presented as if it were authoritative, without
regard for its contribution to the central content and apparent purpose
of the book. At the same time, one must reject the traditional apology of
the blindly believing fundamentalist that “the ways of God are unknowable.”
Nonsense. God has given man a mind and the power of reason exactly so that
he can examine all claims of authority in the light of the Spirit of Truth
and the reality of experience. It is our duty to explore the accuracy of
all things said in the book and to accept the reality that many of the more
factual statements will fail this test.

Revelation, you see, is not
necessarily inspired or authoritative. It may simply be affirming for you
something you may or may not have already known. We try to accept that The
Urantia Book is, on the one hand, an authentic epochal revelation, although
we don’t quite know what this means. On the other hand, we recognize that
it contains factual errors, inconsistencies, and products of misguided copying
and adaptation, all occurring before first publication in 1955. Resolving
the dissonance between belief in a revelation and honest recognition of
its limitations requires us to reformulate our expectations for revelation
itself. No more easy fundamentalism. No. Revelation is no better than the
quality of the revelators and the revelatory process which they sponsored.
In the case of the factual and cosmological material from The Urantia
Book, this appears to be of lesser quality than the more philosophical
and/or spiritual discussions.

Let us speculate for a moment
on how so much error could have been introduced into the revelation.

We might well imagine that
the authors didn’t know any better. If you believe the text is perfect,
you must believe its authors were endowed with superior knowledge and intellectual
powers. You should find it hard to accept that the authors could be so limited.

Or, we might think the celestial
authors felt obliged to insert a lot of misinformation to keep anyone from
keying on technical details and, possibly, triggering an unearned technological
advancement of mankind. Most people find it hard to think of the celestials
as deliberately fabricating a bunch of nonsense to fill the “science” topic.

Perhaps we could understand
the situation better if we reconsidered the purpose of the revelators in
including “scientific” and “factual” material in the text. I suggest that
the main purpose of this inclusion is not to provide any useful information
to the reader or student. Rather, it is provided as a “sweet spot”—a point
of attraction into the text for the reader who expects such information,
but who is not sufficiently analytical or well-informed to notice the unpleasant
inconsistencies. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that there are
a great many topics treated in the book that have no specific relationship
to the central themes, but rather serve as a less demanding entry point
for readers obsessed with details, but unready to face the demands of living
spiritually.

Suppose then, that the revelators
did not intend for the scientific material to be informative to the average
reader, just attractive. Perhaps, since the revelators had nothing new to
say on these subjects, they simply turned the problem of what to say over
to a member of the Contact Commission.

In Christian apologetics the
writings of the Apostle Paul are often classified as those in which he speaks
“by commandment” and those in which he speaks “by permission.” The latter
case thus applies to things that Paul wrote that he did not claim came from
God. Rather, he claimed that God had extended to him permission to insert
his personal views into his letter.

If I am correct that the science
of the book is intentionally uninformative, then it seems reasonable to
expect that the revelators may have simply asked Dr. Sadler or one of his
associates to write up something to be stuck in the book. Certainly, the
presentation and content of such material suggests strongly that it was
not prepared by anyone with a technical education. As a boring repetition
of unfounded assertions about the physical world, it does not seem to have
been written by anyone who cared much about what they were communicating.

It is not, of course, sufficient
to imagine Dr. Sadler secretly adding pages to the papers. The writing quality
of the material is generally as good as the rest of the book, and superior
to Dr. Sadler’s own published writing. In addition, the most suspect material
(such as the core of paper 42) is embedded in a textual context that seems
clearly beyond human thought in content and structure. Some person(s) or
being(s) clearly added to whatever a Contact Commissioner might write and
labored greatly to improve the quality of the writing.

The bottom line to all this
speculation is, of course, the realization that the Urantian cosmology,
which the book itself claims is uninspired, may have largely been authored
in secret by Dr. Sadler and his associates. There may also be sections of
the book where Dr. Sadler failed to create human-sourced expositions or
deleted revelatory material with which he disagreed. The secrecy surrounding
the genesis of the revelation and the incredible myths that have sprung
up about it make it impossible to dismiss these possibilities.

Looking at the first 100 years
(nearly) of the Urantia movement discloses a pattern of behavior by the
movement leadership at any given time that fits well with these questions
about motives for dealing with textual integrity.

We have been told by “old
timers” that Dr. Sadler stated that the text was received in some unspecified
manner through a “sleeping subject.” Our first question must be the veracity
of this claim. Dr. Sadler told a number of people that the sleeping subject
lived in LaGrange, Illinois, near where the Sadlers lived when first coming
to the Chicago area. Dr. Sadler also is said to have claimed the subject
was a member of the Board of Trade, with no interest in the peculiar phenomena
that occurred during his sleep.

Ernest Moyer has devoted considerable
time and effort into researching this story. In the end, Ernest was unable
to find any person living in LaGrange during the years in question who matched
the description given. It is easy to dismiss this as a non-finding, but
it is just as likely, if not more so, that no such person actually existed—that
they were a fabrication of Dr. Sadler. We can add to this the observation
that, if the subject was genuinely disinterested in the phenomena, it was
extremely unlikely that they would have accompanied Dr. Sadler to Chicago
and remained under his (apparently ineffectual) care for years, if not decades.

If the sleeping subject story
is essentially true, then the person must have been much closer to Dr. Sadler
than the random trader from LaGrange. Possibly a member of the Sadler household.
Probably Bill Sadler or Wilfrid Kellogg. It seems unlikely that we will
ever know with certainty.

Moving forward in time a few
decades, you have all heard from members of the Forum how secretively meetings
were held and how Dr. Sadler read from the papers, inserting his own comments
as he felt moved, and prevented the Forum from studying the papers privately
and independently. These could be interpreted as the actions of a man who
feels responsibility for what he has brought to the table but who is unwilling
to expose it fully to critical assessment. Essentially, he is in the enviable
position of being able to concoct any content and any interpretation of
the text that he sees fit and impose it on the blindly faithful Forumites.

A number of unusual opportunities
presented themselves to the students of the revelation in the early days.
Allegedly, an opportunity existed to bring the book to print in the late
1940s at the personal expense of William M. Hales, Sr. Dr. Sadler refused
to countenance this publication, insisting that printing be deferred until
funds had been raised for the project from the entire Forum and not from
one individual. We can understand the thinking behind this action, but we
must also recognize that what appeared to be a conservative act protecting
the text, may also have been an act of fear that allowed Dr. Sadler to retain
personal control over the publication of the book.

As another example, in the
1940s a very successful and well-respected popular author, Harold Sherman,
after spending some 20 years thinking about how the ideas of The Urantia
Book might be efficiently presented to the world, came to Chicago to
offer his services to Dr. Sadler. We know that Dr. Sadler feared his role
in safeguarding the revelation was threatened by Sherman and his ideas.
We also know that Dr. Sadler went to extraordinary lengths to ostracize
Sherman from the Forum group and to render his helpful desires ineffectual.
Again we must ask ourselves if this was a great missed opportunity for the
revelation, allowing Dr. Sadler to preserve and strengthen his personal
control, or a wise move that protected the text from some horrible corruption.

Again, consider the founding
documents of the “movement”—the Declaration of Trust and the Constitution
of Urantia Brotherhood. These twin documents have functioned so poorly over
the past 50 years, it is hard to give any credence to the idea that they
were celestially inspired, or even approved. Bill Sadler openly declared
the probable unworkability of the Foundation/Brotherhood division in commenting
on the situation. Why, then, were they adopted? Was it because of the extreme
degree of control the documents afforded Dr. Sadler and the extreme degree
of disenfranchisement the documents provided for everyone else? Or was it
because of supernatural orders?

I have presented three instances
from the early years in which actions were taken by Dr. Sadler that can
be interpreted as zealously guarding the revelation or eagerly scrambling
to retain as much control as possible over the outworking of the revelation.

The mythmakers of Urantia
contemplate this situation and declare Dr. Sadler the savior of the revelation.
But a secular assessment of the situation would seem to indicate that, while
Dr. Sadler was not trying to harm the revelation as he understood it, he
was definitely trying to keep as much as possible under his personal control,
and would cheerfully fabricate messages and revelations to bolster popular
belief in his guidance. His actions have sometimes been reported to have
been motivated by personal fear of hostile spiritual forces he thought were
arrayed against the revelation.

Strangely enough, understanding
this dynamic has not been sufficient to correct it. The negativity, control,
and invasive micromanagement are built into the governing documents and
the mindsets of the leaders of the organizations, who have gradually self-selected
into their roles. In the years since publication of the book we have seen
innumerable well-conceived efforts in translation, dissemination, outreach,
etc., fail from a lack of organizational willingness to relinquish authority
and control.

The Urantia movement seems
to have a particularly bad track record in the way it handles volunteers
and specialists. Unfortunately, the governing bodies of the Foundation and
the Fellowship are, for the most part, populated by generalists. Such people,
in their unfamiliarity with operational detail, tend to be inherently distrustful
of specialists who would try to help them master the complexities of a modern,
growing organization. Such people cannot cooperate effectively with those
most dedicated to helping, because of their distrust. As a result of this
focus on the retention of social control, valuable volunteer efforts are
undervalued, ignored, dismissed, or forcibly suppressed as they were under
the leadership of Dr. Sadler himself.

This situation is symptomatic
of the despotic organization and operation of the Foundation and the Fellowship
for all these many years. In each case, Dr. Sadler and his associates took
advantage of every legal angle to assure that readers of the book would
be almost completely disenfranchised from any decision-making regarding
the publication and dissemination of the text. This fear-driven and inappropriate
reaction to the mere possession and control of the text has produced a publisher
that usurps the role of a church and is accountable to no one. It has also
produced a membership organization that makes it actually or nearly impossible
for its members to influence the policies and actions of its officers. Both
organizations signally fail to support, motivate, reward, or properly recognize
the unsolicited work of volunteer teams with affinity for a specific service.

Successful pluralistic organizations
do not arise by design alone. In fact, over-design may become an impediment
to change and progress, as seems to be the case with the Fellowship and
Foundation. I believe that the time has come to correct this error, but
I do not claim to offer a detailed, explicit solution. While it is true
that I have many specific opinions on the matter of organization, I do not
claim these opinions should be taken uncritically. A successful organization
will not arise from my suggestions or those of any team that does not fully
represent the diverse interests of the readership.

Unless Urantia Foundation
has a change of heart and decides to pursue its genuine religious purpose,
it seems most unlikely that any reformation of structure or behavior can
occur on that front. Obviously, the Foundation can easily continue to do
what it has been doing, with or without lawsuits, but it must accept that,
as the book becomes well-known and multiple publishers are developed, it
will no longer occupy a central position in the movement.

The Fellowship is also likely
to fade in importance unless it finds ways to restructure itself to promote
member involvement and to support the ministry of all Urantians. Of the
many possible approaches to rectification, I most prefer one in which the
members of the Fellowship undertake the reformation themselves. I refer,
of course, to the oft-discussed constitutional convention.

The key to enabling a broad
Fellowship reform is to empower the membership to reform the organization
in any way on which a majority can agree. But the constitution of the Fellowship
makes no provision for amendment by convention, thus denying this major
power to the polity. Empowerment thus comes to mean the amendment of the
Fellowship constitution to provide for the calling of a binding constitutional
convention, with the customary powers and prerogatives.

Once such an amendment has
been accomplished, if there remains sufficient interest in reformation,
a convention could be called by a majority of members, including members-at-large.
This would be a fairly large and complex undertaking. Many individuals with
experience of the existing organization would be drawn to participate in
initiating major change, but they would be influenced now by input from
a much larger group, with less commitment to the status quo. The organizational
framework emerging from such negotiations and compromises would ultimately
be far more robust than the present church-like constitution. One might
look approvingly on plans that would provide for continual review and reformation
of the organization,

Absent change in the Foundation
and Fellowship organizations and relationships, why would anyone look to
either for movement leadership?

We should each be moving ahead
to engage our own networks, to plan our own projects, and to conduct our
own ministries with no need to seek permission or approval. Let all those
who will, join us in our efforts, while we take care not to become dependent
on a single individual or a small clique with political motivations.

If the work is worthy, it
will prosper.

Friends, the time has come
to be about your father’s business. Let us join in friendship and fellowship
as we move forward into a new era of individual freedom and personal choice.
Let us go forth exhibiting divine love towards all, in every walk of life.